Unfortunately, the Cartels are terrorist organizations. Decriminalization is only going to be a part of it. TBQH, I wouldn't be surprised if they made overt moves against their respective Governments if the drug profiteering was taken away.

Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

hardinparamedic:Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

My off-the-cuff plan: Work with the Mexican President to set up an operation, tell him we need Mexican police to watch the cartel's various headquarters for a possible Mexican SWAT-style move.Put the Mexican SWAT types on some training mission far far away. Make sure this leaks.When the various cartel's leadership comfortably gather as they know the raid won't happen any time soon (thanks to the info being fed to them by the police assigned to watch them, along with many of those off for training), hit their compounds with drones until they're flat.

The_Sponge:AverageAmericanGuy: Meanwhile, the Navy Seals and Army Rangers are considered heroes.

Perspective is an interesting thing.

Your mind is so open......that it's causing your brain to leak out.

Not really.

I'm probably responsible for more deaths than this guy or the aforementioned military forces, I ultimately made the weapons they used. I milled out the negative space which comprised the useful parts in the molds all of their parts were shot into.

Truth be told, I'd be worried about my sanity if I DIDN'T think about things like that. Might mean I'm turning into a Republican again.

hardinparamedic:doglover: But clearly there's some justification for keeping drugs illegal.

Unfortunately, the Cartels are terrorist organizations. Decriminalization is only going to be a part of it. TBQH, I wouldn't be surprised if they made overt moves against their respective Governments if the drug profiteering was taken away.

Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

Like most other experiments in prohibition, they'll just end up with bootleggers in politics. They have money now, it's the natural progression of things. Whether they bring the corner boys and enforcers up with them is also unfortunately likely to be predicted by historical precedence.

hardinparamedic:doglover: But clearly there's some justification for keeping drugs illegal.

Unfortunately, the Cartels are terrorist organizations. Decriminalization is only going to be a part of it. TBQH, I wouldn't be surprised if they made overt moves against their respective Governments if the drug profiteering was taken away.

Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

Laying seige to the castle isn't going to bring it down.

Launching rocks at the wall isn't going to bring it down.

Tunneling under the walls isn't going to bring it down.

Poisoning the well isn't going to bring it down.

But doing all four, and whatever else you can think of? That might just get you that castle. War isn't easy, but Mexico's closer and step one taking them on is part of my end game for a utopia. Plus Tequilla.

hardinparamedic:AverageAmericanGuy: Yeah, those terrorists at weddings enjoying their BBQ goat. So glad we have bad men to protect us from them.

Want me to get you a towel? Your brain is dripping out all over that strawman.

Unfortunately, he does have a point. Most of the casualties from our counter-terrorism operations in recent years outside of occupied zones have been either civilian, children, or unconfirmed as to whether or not they're combatant or non-combatant.

Now, I'm NOT saying that drones are a bad thing. I think they're the way to go, but we HAVE to have a human intelligence element on the ground to mark and confirm before we start launching Hellfires at white specs as displayed by a shoddy and rather low resolution FLIR sensor with hand ground optics for focus and collimation. Our drones need to improve, our intelligence needs to improve, and our intelligence networking and confirmation needs to improve before we can be in the right for using pilots 3500-8000 miles away to pull the trigger instead of operators on the ground within a mile who can confirm intelligence.

It's a shiatty world out there, yeah, but we don't need to be flinging explosives willy-nilly and making even more enemies.

Look, I'm all for killing (it's natural), but calling some for heroes and some for bad guys is moot.Drug lords order killings to protect economic interests whereas governments order killings to protect economic interests.In the end it's the same shiat that is being done - someone dies for the profit of others.

No offense but I doubt any one hit-man killed 800 people. Not saying it's impossible, but it seems unlikely. Many of the people getting killed are in rival cartels---don't you think they shoot back?

800 people would be one in one hundred of those killed in the past decade of cartel killings, and there are hundreds of thousands of cartel members. It's most likely that most cartel members have killed zero, than many cartel members have killed one or a few people, and that a good number have killed more than a few, and that perhaps several have killed a few dozen. But it's quite unlikely that one man killed more than 800.

hardinparamedic:AverageAmericanGuy: Meanwhile, the Navy Seals and Army Rangers are considered heroes.

Perspective is an interesting thing.

Murdering civilians is totally similar to killing terrorist fighters in a declared conflict in accordance with the laws and rules of war.

One man's terrorist is another guy trying to feed his starving family- or anybody else telling the truth that Barack Obama doesn't want you to hear. The US throws that word terrorist around far too loosely these days.

Hermione_Granger:hardinparamedic: AverageAmericanGuy: Meanwhile, the Navy Seals and Army Rangers are considered heroes.

Perspective is an interesting thing.

Murdering civilians is totally similar to killing terrorist fighters in a declared conflict in accordance with the laws and rules of war.

One man's terrorist is another guy trying to feed his starving family- or anybody else telling the truth that Barack Obama doesn't want you to hear. The US throws that word terrorist around far too loosely these days.

That's not paranoid at all.

At any rate, you're right about one thing, most of the people who are doing the ground-pounding for the Taliban and other terrorist groups such as Al Queda tend to be overtly poor, under-educated religious men who are enamored by the promise of support for their families.

Bucky Katt:It took 800 corpses for his conscience to kick in. Perfectly normal.

People in organized crime at this level consider themselves to be soldiers... and since their gangs are closer to being regional governments in most of Mexico than the actual Mexican government, they... actually kinda have a point.

So... apply the psychology of military personnel executing properly-given orders here, not murderers. A lot of US soldiers feel similar, it takes a lot of killing before it really wears on them.

// I specify US soldiers because they're similar in that their enemies don't typically have a very good chance to fight back and their buddies aren't really being killed around them. The legality of the conflicts involved is a different topic, I'm mostly pointing out that he's not necessarily some sort of exceptionally sociopathic person.

// US soldiers also don't really have the option of outright ignoring the collateral damage they cause, it's pretty widely publicised, so there's some similar rationalization on the 'civilians' part, too.

Boojum2k:hardinparamedic: Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

My off-the-cuff plan: Work with the Mexican President to set up an operation, tell him we need Mexican police to watch the cartel's various headquarters for a possible Mexican SWAT-style move.Put the Mexican SWAT types on some training mission far far away. Make sure this leaks.When the various cartel's leadership comfortably gather as they know the raid won't happen any time soon (thanks to the info being fed to them by the police assigned to watch them, along with many of those off for training), hit their compounds with drones until they're flat.

There are some flaws to that, I admit, but it might work.

If it gets legalized in the states, then there are no smuggling routes to fight over, also no money to fund a fight. If you kill off the leaders, then it just creates a power vacuum for those left alive to fill. How do they decide who gets to come out on top? More violence.

Lars The Canadian Viking:If it gets legalized in the states, then there are no smuggling routes to fight over, also no money to fund a fight. If you kill off the leaders, then it just creates a power vacuum for those left alive to fill. How do they decide who gets to come out on top? More violence.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Actually, that wasn't the flaw I had in mind. Sometimes violence begets more violence, sometimes not. The huge flaw I thought of after writing that was all the house servants, maids, that sort of thing. Maybe DEVGRU instead of drones.

But yeah, legalization would be good too (and smart, and the right thing to do), but I doubt sadistic power-hungry criminals are going to be good happy little citizens afterwards, and they still have money, military grade guns (including actual assault weapons, not the "assault-style" the knickertwisters harp on), and troops.

hardinparamedic:doglover: But clearly there's some justification for keeping drugs illegal.

Unfortunately, the Cartels are terrorist organizations. Decriminalization is only going to be a part of it. TBQH, I wouldn't be surprised if they made overt moves against their respective Governments if the drug profiteering was taken away.

Even if we blanketly legalized every drug in the United States for recreational use, there is no other way this ends other than in violence.

That's a problem - once Prohibition had created and empowered the Mafia, legalizing booze didn't make it go away. You can't put out a fire by merely attempting to reverse the process by which you started it.

hardinparamedic:AverageAmericanGuy: Meanwhile, the Navy Seals and Army Rangers are considered heroes.

Perspective is an interesting thing.

Murdering civilians is totally similar to killing terrorist fighters in a declared conflict in accordance with the laws and rules of war.

One of the rules of war is that you must declare war. We haven't. Why? Because there is no casus belli. Traveling half-way around the world to invade and occupy countries that have done nothing to you is an act of aggression under all laws and rules of war. Those who participate in wars of aggression are not heroes; they are better compared to Nazis.

iq_in_binary:hardinparamedic: AverageAmericanGuy: Yeah, those terrorists at weddings enjoying their BBQ goat. So glad we have bad men to protect us from them.

Want me to get you a towel? Your brain is dripping out all over that strawman.

Unfortunately, he does have a point. Most of the casualties from our counter-terrorism operations in recent years outside of occupied zones have been either civilian, children, or unconfirmed as to whether or not they're combatant or non-combatant.

Even if they are combatants they are perfectly justified, and we are not. People have a right to defend their homes and families against a foreign invading army. Fighting against people half-way around the world is in no way self defense.